


Ebb and...

by Artemystic



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Loss, Magical Realism, Searching for Closure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-03-10 01:58:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18928990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemystic/pseuds/Artemystic
Summary: Aidan visits a castle ruin the night before his return to America. He meets a pale girl who seems to know more than her years would suggest.





	Ebb and...

**Author's Note:**

> I know most people on this site are here for the fan fiction (XD), but if you read this and let me know what you think, I will definitely appreciate it. ^^

* * *

“These walls have stood for a hundred, two hundred, three hundred years,” the pale girl murmured to the heavy gray clouds that hung over the evening sky. A gentle breeze whispered over and around the worn stone bricks, and in the west, the sun’s glow faded behind the softness of green hills, leaving a last bit of golden glow over the valley.

“I believe this place is closer to five hundred years,” Aidan said as he reached the top of the wall in time to hear the quiet remark. He walked over to the edge of the wall and watched the fading light. He’d waited too long to come to Ireland.

“Is it?” the pale girl said in her lilting voice. “Time goes by so quickly.” She stared out at the horizon over the hills, watching as the sky washed away the colors. “One day, this wall will fall,” she said, and Aidan saw her glance at him. “Will you be here to see it?”

“I’ll be flying back to America tomorrow,” he said, peering over the wall to the ground below, “so I doubt it. Quite a drop, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” the girl said, not looking down.

Aidan shifted, and a loose rock grated under his shoe. He pulled out his phone and checked the time.

“Do you have a lover?” she asked suddenly, just as he was contemplating leaving. It was getting dark, after all, and there wasn’t really much to see here.

He paused, unsure. “I did,” he said at last, voice falling between the cracks of the wall to be lost in the darkness gathering at its base. “We were together five years, before…” His voice stopped, and he wiped his eyes, pretending the moisture caught in their corners was from the lowering clouds.

The girl eyed him again, briefly. “You are so young,” she said, and her voice held a great weight, and a distance, and she sighed.

Aidan looked at her wonderingly, for she couldn’t have been much older than fifteen. “What do you mean?” he asked, but she only shook her head, pale locks shifting over thin shoulders with the motion. A gust of wind whipped the hair back from her face and pushed at the shawl wrapped around her arms. Her plaid skirt danced in the breeze.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said.

“I had a friend once who used to say that everything mattered,” Aidan said feeling a fond smile lift his face as he remembered _sunshine flowers soft damp earth—_

“Your friend was wrong,” the girl said, and her words seemed to fall heavily at their feet. “Nothing matters.” Her expression darkened even as the clouds above them did the same.

“Well now, I wouldn’t say _nothing_ matters,” he started, thinking of _buttercups blue eyes soft brown hair_ , and the girl suddenly whirled on him, eyes ablaze.

“Nothing matters!” she spat, and Aidan fell back a step, cooling stone at his back. “You think it does, so you spend your whole life trying to make a difference, trying to make it _matter_ ”—her mouth twisted with scorn—“and then you die, and then what? Nothing!” She stared at him, shoulders heaving and grey eyes bright with emotion, and Aidan stared back. In this one moment, on this dreary, isolated stone wall in the middle of nowhere, this petite, pale girl was the realest thing he’d ever seen. Then she spun to look back out at the nothingness, skirt spinning and pale hair falling down her back in a whirl of motion, and she seemed to fade. “Nothing matters,” she whispered, clutching her shawl close to her chest.

“You are far too young to be this cynical.”

She cut her eyes at the man and huffed a laugh. Then she chuckled a little.

Aidan frowned. “What did I say?”

The girl shook her head and chuckled again, pushing her hair out of her face. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, but she smiled, and the tension in her seemed to ease. Aidan had the sudden thought that she would grow someday into a beautiful woman.

Together, they watched night take over the world. The silence draped comfortably about them, and at length, the girl sighed again.

“On a clear day, you can see the ocean from here,” she said. Aidan made a questioning noise and she nodded. “You wouldn’t know it, but there used to be a whole village here. There were sheep and goats, men and women, little children rolling in the mud and running from a scolding.”

“I imagine there were many villages like that, once,” he said, feeling the need to say something.

“A few,” she agreed. “The last lord of this castle wall was a boy too young to be a man, but too old to be a child.” She stopped talking, and Aidan looked over to see a strange sadness upon her features. Her eyes were narrowed as she looked across the valley, and she seemed at once older and so, so young.

“What happened to him?” he asked.

“He died.” She looked at him, eyes piercing. “He was betrayed by his followers, his loved ones, his kin.”

Aidan didn’t know what to say to that. He felt as though she was trying to impart something to him, to make him understand, but he couldn’t fathom what it might be. “I’m sorry,” he said, feeling helpless and rather lost.

She laughed, a short, sharp sound. “Don’t be.” She turned away.

The breeze pushed through them, colder now, and scented with rain. Aidan shivered and pulled his jacket tighter about him. He looked over at the girl in her skirt and wondered how warm that shawl could possibly be. “Are you cold?” he asked. He started to take off his jacket, but she shook her head.

“I’m used to it,” she said. “I don’t feel it anymore.”

“Well,” he said. “Anyway, I suppose I should go. I have to get back to Dublin tonight, and it’s kind of a long drive.”

The girl looked out over the darkened hills and nodded.

Aidan shifted his weight and paused. “Do you need a ride?” he offered.

She shook her head again. “I live nearby,” she said.

Aidan looked around. He couldn’t see lights in any direction, save the twinkle of a few stars that still dared to be out in the storm-threatening night. He turned back to the girl and raised his eyebrows.

“Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there,” she said without looking over.

“Okay.” Aidan paused again. “Are you sure?” he said after a moment.

The girl looked at him, tilting her head a little to the side. “Why did you come here?” she asked.

“To see the castle,” he answered.

She shook her head. “Why did you come here?”

Aidan frowned and shrugged. “I’ve always wanted to visit Ireland,” he tried.

“No,” the girl said, turning to face him fully. _“Why did you come here?”_

Aidan frowned harder. “I don’t… I don’t understand.” He ran the fingers of one hand through his dark hair. What did she want to know?

“You need to say it,” the girl said, and her eyes grew darker and her voice seemed to surround him in the night. The clouds loomed low overhead, and the wall stood, solid and ancient under his feet, and it seemed to Aidan that he could feel all the ages of the earth around him. He staggered and grabbed hold of the stone wall.

“I don’t… I don’t—”

_“Say it,_ _”_ she said. _“_ _Say it.”_

The darkness spun dizzyingly around him and Aidan fell to his knees, holding his head as if in agony.

“Tell me the reason,” the girl commanded. “You need to say it,” she repeated.

In the spinning and whirling of the night, of his mind, Aidan felt a spark of memory— _firelight stories warm arms and laughter_ —and he grasped at it.

“I—The boy!” he gasped out. “The one you told me about.”

“What about him?” the girl asked, but Aidan couldn’t make the world stop turning over, couldn’t make sense of it.

“Aidan,” she called. “Aidan.”

And just like that, his world snapped back into focus. He fell back on his heels, head knocking against the stone wall, and he turned his cheek into its coolness. “How did you know my name?” he asked, opening his eyes, but silence and emptiness greeted him. Aidan opened his mouth to call out, but he realized that, while the girl knew his name—somehow, impossibly—he had no idea what hers might be.

He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out his phone, cursing when his fingers trembled and it slipped to clatter against the stones by his knee. He picked it up and turned on the flashlight, shining it around, but he was alone. He stood and looked out at the valley, straining to catch a glimpse of pale hair, but night had finally taken hold and everything was dark.

After a moment he turned to go, and a tiny bit of color caught his eye. There, on the wall next to him, was a little yellow flower. A buttercup.

He picked it up carefully, and the fragile flower shook. It took him a moment to realize it was his hand that was unsteady. He touched the petals carefully with his other fingers, remembering a smile and bright, bright eyes. He saw a beautiful woman in the sunlight, carefully cultivating a yard full of little yellow flowers.

_It’s because everyone always steps on them,_ she’d said. _Someone’s got to look out for them._

_It doesn’t matter,_ he’d say back, _because they’re just a weed._

She would just smile and dig her bare fingers into the dirt. _It matters to them,_ she always insisted.

“Some things matter,” he whispered into the breeze, feeling it cool the wetness on his face. He sniffed and wiped at his face with his jacket, twisting his features into a wet grimace at the mess.

“I came to find her,” he said to the darkness, wondering if the strange, pale girl would hear. “To find Evelyn. She always said this was her heart’s land, and I figured if there was an afterlife, if we had souls, this is where hers would go.” He sniffed again and turned away from the wall, carefully making his way down the crumbling stone steps in the darkness.

On grass and dirt once more, Aidan made his way to the little rental car, looking back once at the wall. It stood under the clouds, tall and imposing and dark, a looming shadow of the past that made him shiver once. The walls seemed to reach out toward him and he thought that maybe they knew what it was like, to hold up against the heavy burden of loss.

Then he opened the door, slid inside, and drove away without looking back again.

Had he done so, he might have seen a faint flicker of pale hair up on the wall, seen bright, bright eyes.

“I know, Aodhan.” The breeze carried the words away from the pale girl. “We will always find one another.” She heaved a trembling sigh and looked up at the clouds as the rain began to fall, wishing she could feel it. Then she looked back at the stars she could see in the break between clouds and earth, lost in memories that wouldn’t let her go. Picking out the brightest one, she made a futile wish.

* * *

 


End file.
